"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." Orwell

"Men are so simple of mind and so dominated by immediate needs that the deceitful man can easily find those ready to be deceived."
Machiavelli

"The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.." H.L. Mencken

Monday, March 28, 2016

Tough Call

Ammosexuals are outraged that guns won't, for the moment, be allowed at the Republican convention. And I gotta say, for the sake of consistency, they've got a case.

... “Policies of the Quicken Loans Arena do not supersede the rights given to us by our Creator in the U.S. Constitution,” the petition reads.

Americans For Responsible Open Carry also want presidential contender Ohio Gov. John Kasich to use his executive power to override the so-called gun-free zone loophole in Ohio’s law. RNC Chairman Reince Preibus also must explain how “a venue so unfriendly to Second Amendment rights was chosen for the Republican Convention and have a backup plan to move the site if the group’s demands aren’t met...

Nice touch, that creator thing.

It's sorta like the legislators voting to allow guns pretty much everywhere except their own place of work. Or like being a little bit pregnant. You make free-fire zones part of your platform, you can't draw lines for yourself but not for everyone else. It puts the lie to the whole good-guy-with-a-gun thing.

Plus, the prospect of hot-headed Trumpists who, so far, have only been armed with elbows, fists, spittle, and feet, confronting Cruz supporters, armed with religious certainty that God is on their side, when the conventional shenanigans begin, is, in the abstract at least, something forward to which to look. Assuming that's not too many commas.

So I'm of two minds. I don't wish actual death on any of them, but it could be apocalyptically entertaining. And think what the networks could charge for ads during the coverage. Which, in the end, is what it's all about to them. As opposed to, say, news.

[So the petition might have been elaborate trolling. The point remains, though: the official policy is no guns, which seems so un-Republican. And all the current R candidates have pledged to get rid of gun-free zones! So let 'em start by quickening the loans arena.]

I think just allowing guns into the arena does't go far enough. We ought to start a Kickstarter campaign to provide each registered Republican delegate with a handgun and ammunition as they enter. It's what they want for everyone else, why not let them show how it works?

It's too bad that the owner fessed up. He could easily have had more fun and driven home his point more effectively had he invented a consistent personality to go along with the spoof. Maybe he wasn't willing to run the risk that he might make a couple of new friends in the FBI. Or, once publicly unmasked, finding a couple of new friends from a local militia group.

For The Sake of My Sanity

Some will know me from my other blog, "Surgeonsblog." Of late I've given over to frothing at the mouth as the world descends into stupidity, and our politics and our citizens seem, in numbers enough to be meaningful, unable to see it. So for now I'm leaving surgery writing behind, if for no other reason than to defuse and diffuse my unrelenting sense of doom, and with no expectation of making a difference. These are things that, to me, are obvious. Except that, apparently, they aren't.

RWS™

RWS™: For those who drop by here in the middle, and wonder what it means: it's my shorthand for Right Wing Screamers, which includes such a long list it's tiresome to type it. (I distinguish these blowhards from thoughtful conservatives, of whom I sort of take it on faith that there must still be some.) You know who I mean: Palin, Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Breitbart (RIP), Malkin, Savage, Levin, Ingraham, Doocey (more of a drooler than a screamer), Hewitt, Goldberg, Gingrich, Kristol, Scarborough (+/-), Bachmann, Inhofe, Bond, Broun, Boehner, Kelley, Santorum, Cain. To name but a few. Behold them in their unrepentant disregard for reality: the RWS™